Sugar Ray Comes Home: The OC Fair's Big Ska-Pop Sunday
Some homecomings you have to squint to see. This Sunday's is not one of them. On July 26, the Pacific Amphitheatre hands its stage to Sugar Ray, Smash Mouth, and The English Beat — a triple bill of late-'90s radio muscle — and for Orange County the headline slot is personal, because Sugar Ray is one of ours.
The band that became a "Fly" and "Every Morning" hit machine came up out of Newport Beach, part of the same Southern California churn that gave the world a decade of sun-bleached, ska-adjacent pop-punk. Frontman Mark McGrath has been a genial ambassador for that whole era ever since. Booking Sugar Ray into a Costa Mesa fairground on a July night is less a concert than a class reunion with a beach view.
The support is inspired. The English Beat, the 2-Tone survivors whose "Mirror in the Bathroom" is foundational text for every OC ska kid who ever skanked in a parking lot, are having a busy Fair — they return August 16 on the closing-weekend bill with Steel Pulse, making this summer a genuine two-night 2-Tone celebration in Costa Mesa. Smash Mouth, San Jose's own, brings the "All Star" of it all; say what you want, that song has outlived every joke made at its expense.
This is the Pacific Amphitheatre doing what it does best. The room, wired into the OC Fair & Event Center at 88 Fair Drive, runs its Summer Concert Series from July 17 through August 16, and a concert ticket includes same-day Fair admission — meaning you can ride the Ferris wheel, eat something regrettable on a stick, and then watch a genuine Orange County success story play the hits as the sun drops.
Bring your teenagers and lie about how cool you were in 1997. Bring your parents and let them be right about it. Either way, this is the weekend the Fair stops being background noise and becomes the main event — and the biggest name on the bill grew up a few freeway exits from the stage.
Sources: Sugar Ray, Smash Mouth, English Beat - Songkick; Sugar Ray, Pacific Amphitheatre Jul 26 - JamBase; Pacific Amphitheatre 2026 Schedule